Jott Your Notes with Your Voice Instead of a Keyboard

The first time you use Jott, a voice recorder from Jott Networks, you get the feeling that you’ve just seen something that’s crazy, in a good way.

There’s not much to the voice recorders in the App Store. Press record; press play. Nothing could be simpler. Oh, sure, there are a few sparkly features in some voice recorder apps such as adjustable audio quality and the ability to append text but they’re all pretty much same-old-same-old, which is what you would expect after all.

Then there’s Jott, it too is a voice recorder and it’s capable of only recording 15 seconds of audio at a time, which is hardly anything to write home about. That’s a huge limitation compared to every other voice recorder in the world-virtual and real.

Although Jott is not as capable a voice recorder as all of the rest of those guys, it stands out in another way. Jott enables you to transcribe your recordings into text.

Here’s how Jott works: Record up to 15 seconds of audio and upload it to Jott’s server, using your iPhone number as you login ID after registering. There, it’s transcribed and returned to Jott in your iPhone. The amount of time that takes to make the round trip from voice to text depends on the amount of traffic on the server. One day, a transcription took 5 minutes, and on another day (the Thanksgiving holiday) it took about a minute.

You can keep your notes as lists on Jott Networks, in your iPhone and on your desktop, and the three will automatically sync. You can cut and past text into other apps as well.

The Jott apps are free. The iPhone version is advertising supported.

Jott offers upgrade and premium plans ranging from $39.50 to $129.50 per year (you can also pay as you go, month-to-month). The full package features 30-second, voice-to-text, reminders via email and SMS, hands-free email and text messaging, integration with Outlook and Google Calendar, posts to Twitter and other features.

No doubt, many people will find the full menu’s price a bit much. Try the free version of Jott at least. It will make you say, “Gee whiz!”